The Leipzig Affair

by Fiona Rintoul

  “So, you’re going to stop?”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “What? Just like that?”

  “Yeah. Just like that.”

  “It won’t work. You’ve been there before.”

  “Not like this I haven’t. This is different. I’ve had a shock this time.”

  He put the AA leaflets down on the bed. “Look, I’ve come all the way down from Edinburgh to see you. I’ve taken time off work. I’ve left Joanna on her own with the kids, which, let me tell you, she wasn’t too happy about. You’ve had shocks before. I’d like you to promise me you’ll at least give AA a try.”

  “What is this? Did you promise my mum you’d get me to go or something?”

  He didn’t say anything. So that was it. He had promised her. They’d all been madly in touch. Making plans for Bobbie. It was a conspiracy.

  I pushed the leaflets towards him. “Away with you!” I said, trying to be funny.

  But again, he didn’t laugh. He’d changed since he got married. No longer the black-eyed rogue I’d known as a kid. He stood up. “I’ve got to go,” he said, and there was a whole subtext in those words. The long journey back to Edinburgh. Joanna at home on her own with the kids. All the trouble he’d been put to. All the trouble everyone had been put to.

  I didn’t fucking ask you to come, I wanted to say. Instead, I rallied my forces and said, “Thanks for coming to see me, big man. I appreciate it.”

  He stood for a moment looking at the floor, then bent down and picked up a wisp of blood-stained cotton wool. “Hospitals are filthy these days,” he said, dropping it absent-mindedly into the bin. When he turned back to me, his face was as bleak as a rainy day in Glencoe and there were tears in his eyes.

  “I’d like you to know that I miss you,” he said. “You’re my best friend. We’ve known each other since we were five. You’ve been like a brother to me. I’m asking you to please sort yourself out. I’ll help in any way I can, but it’s got to come from you, wee man. You’re the only one who can fix this.”

  When he left I felt like I’d been kicked. My body started to shake, and a yelp of pain rose from somewhere deep inside me. He was my best friend. I loved him. I couldn’t make him laugh any more but it seemed I could make him cry. The next day I told the nurse that I would like to have another appointment with the nice lady from the South Islington Alcohol Advisory Centre after all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  District Administration

  Leipzig,

  25.11.1985

  for State Security

  stern-rö

  L e i p z i g

  Evaluation and Control Group

  OPK “Hamlet” - Registration Number: VI/946/83

  Department XX/9 – Comrade Pankowitcz (2514)

  The OPK investigation of:

  REINSCH, Magdalena Maria (16.06.64) – “Coralie”

  was initiated on 10.10.1984. The main reason for the Operative Personenkontrolle (Operative Control of an Individual) was “Coralie”’s previous unstable political-cultural attitude, which manifested itself in the form of a distorted understanding of the conditions in socialist countries, leading “Coralie” to abandon her studies at the Karl Marx University Leipzig (KMU) and seek out links with negative-hostile elements. “Coralie” has since been rehabilitated and readmitted to the Party and to the translation and interpretation study programme at KMU.

  The operational plan is to use three IMs (unofficial collaborators) to monitor “Coralie”’s progress from a political standpoint while she is participating in study at KMU. In the further investigation of this case, the information of IMS “Babylonia” should be taken into account; according to this information “Coralie” ‘often ponders her future in the GDR’ and ‘expresses hostile opinions’.

  You flick forward to one of the reports “Babylonia” wrote:

  District Administration

  Leipzig, 30.04.1986

  for State Security

  stern-rö

  L e i p z i g

  Department XX/9

  Report from IMS “Babylonia” on recent meetings with “Coralie”

  Two meetings took place between “Coralie” and me in the past week, and further to these meetings it was possible to establish and elaborate on the following information regarding the surveillance object’s proposed actions and state of mind:

  On 15.05.1986 she intends to travel to the city of Prague in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in order to participate in a touristic excursion with the individual named MCPHERSON, Robert James (“Highlander”), a British research student currently resident at 2034 Leipzig, 18th October Street, No 8. This touristic excursion is not to be understood as indicative of a romantic intention on the part of the surveillance object. Her objective is rather to create the impression of a romantic intention in order to deflect attention away from other planned negative-hostile activities whose end purpose is to facilitate an illegal crossing of the state border.

  At the bottom of the report, there is this:

  Expenses:

  1 pot coffee 8.75 M

  2 pieces cheese cake à 3.50 M

  1 bottle red wine 9.00 M

  24.75 M

  There was also a stipend of 225.00 East Marks per month. Was that the motivation?

  You close the folder and put the file back on the top shelf of the metal store cupboard. The other shelves hold your developer, film processing tanks and old negatives. You created this workroom cum darkroom not long after you moved into the apartment on Pflaster Street.

  Before, it was a kind of dressing room off the main bedroom. The walls were painted a dark shade of plum and there was a divan against one wall. Above the divan hung a framed black and white photograph of Marek in a trench coat on the Marx-Engels Bridge that you took, which had appeared on the fashion pages of Sibylle magazine. You still have it, tucked away in a drawer somewhere. His hair was long then. Past his shoulders. He’s staring moodily into the river, a burning cigarette in one hand. So handsome. So in control.

  He brought you to this room the first time you made love. He opened the heavy velvet curtains and sat you on the window ledge as he undid your blouse, lingering over each button. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, as he caressed your small breasts. “So strong and firm. Not like a woman at all. Like a boy, only better.” He turned you round and eased down your jeans and pants. “I love you,” he whispered, as he moved inside you. “What we have is special. It’s not like other loves. We’ll always be together in our own way.”

  In our own way. You knew what that meant. And you didn’t mind. You didn’t mind at all. You wanted a love that was special and like no other.

  Now you understand how damaged you were by your brother’s accident. But back then you thought this special love from Marek would see you home.

  At your trial, they knew everything, and you didn’t understand how that could be. You were so naïve, ducking Jana and thinking you were very clever. Organising a decoy. You had no idea how intensively you were being watched. Perhaps no one did. People suppressed their suspicions about those closest to them. Otherwise, how could they have gone on?

  You reach up and take the file back down from the metal store cupboard. This is the first time you have looked at your Stasi files since the day when Gert picked you up from Normannen Street.

  It’s time to look again. Time to be brave. You’ve known that since your father’s stunted apology at Jürgen’s funeral. You open the file and spread the contents out on the floor. There you are sunbathing with Marek in the garden at the hut by the lake. Here’s a photo of you walking along Shakespeare Street in the rain.

  There are other photos too. From later. They never stopped watching you. Here’s one of you and Uncle Ivan in the Hotel Metropol (freely convertible currencies only). You met him there after your release. A newspaper contact of his had told him you were out, and he wrote to you at Shakespeare Street suggesting a time.

  He strode acro
ss the hotel foyer towards you in his crumpled, seersucker suit and took you in his arms. He didn’t notice the way the young man standing under the clocks behind the reception desk that showed the time in Moscow, Havana and Beijing turned to watch you in the mirror as he steered you towards the elevator, saying, “You have time for dinner, right? Is here okay? The restaurant in this hotel is not at all bad.”

  The restaurant was a festival of plastic East German luxury. You shrunk into your chair as Uncle Ivan scanned the wine list.

  “I’ll take a beer,” you said, choosing an eastern brand. When the waiter came, you opted for the cheapest thing on the menu: pork schnitzel and chips.

  After you’d ordered, Uncle Ivan took off his glasses and looked into your eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked. “We were so worried about you when we found out what had happened.”

  You didn’t really know how to answer that question. Were you all right? The week before your periods had started again, having stopped when you were in the tiger cage, and so you said, “Yes, I’m all right.”

  “I feel so responsible,” he said.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I really thought we’d considered everything. I still don’t know how they found out.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “And then, you were gone and we had no information. Nothing. We just had to keep hoping you’d be able to get a message out.”

  “I did try, but somehow it didn’t get through.”

  “If only we’d got it. Marek left a bit later.” He glanced over at you a little warily when he said that. Perhaps he thought this news would make you angry. But you were beyond anger by then.

  “I know,” you said.

  Uncle Ivan didn’t tell you how Marek got out, and you didn’t ask, not least because of the waiter standing just inside your field of vision, who had been polishing the same glass for the past five minutes.

  “If we’d had more information we could have done something for you from over there.”

  You shrugged. “I’m out now.”

  “I have a message for you from Marek.”

  You put a finger to your lips. “Let’s take a walk.”

  You walked from the hotel down Unter den Linden, stopping at the Marx Engels Bridge, where you looked into the River Spree just as Marek does in the photograph from Sibylle.

  “You’ve changed,” Uncle Ivan said.

  You shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Marek is in West Berlin,” he said. “He stayed there because he didn’t want to be too far away from you. He can’t come over. He’s still an East German citizen in the eyes of the government here. He asked me to tell you that he thinks about you often and that we’re at your disposal if you want to try again.”

  You looked into the river. He thinks about you often. What had he said when you first made love at Pflaster Street? We’ll always be together in our own way.

  In Leipzig, you had been talking to Torsten about putting on an exhibition of your photographs. You and Kerstin had joined a pressure group called Alliance 88 and were hosting regular meetings at Shakespeare Street. Mrs Dannewitz hadn’t been well and relied on you to get her shopping.

  “I want to stay here,” you said.

  You lay the photograph of you and Uncle Ivan at the Hotel Metropol down on the floor. They weren’t as good with a camera as you are, the grey men from the Stasi. But that’s okay. You have your own photos too. You can do something with this material. Something that will take you outside of the private sphere. It’s time. You owe it to Jürgen. And to yourself.

  Tomorrow, you’ll phone Torsten at the gallery.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  I landed at Tempelhof Airport on a dark, wintry evening in early December, back in Berlin for the first time since I was thrown out of the GDR at the Sonnenallee checkpoint. I’d been to West Germany a couple of times in the intervening years. There had been trips to Frankfurt when I was at Liebermann Brothers. But I hadn’t been east of the River Elbe in fourteen years.

  I stared out of the window as the S-Bahn snaked eastwards through Kreuzberg and into Friedrichstraße on elevated tracks. Across the river spun the circular neon logo of the Berliner Ensemble. I’d gone there once with Kevin to see a production of the second part of Goethe’s Faust, an impenetrable and noisy rampage which served only to prove that those who said Faust II couldn’t be staged were probably right.

  My hotel was on Unter den Linden. I’d booked it because I knew it. Back in the day, it had been an Interhotel for western tourists and I’d sometimes drunk coffee in the downstairs restaurant, which looked on to the street. The restaurant was almost empty when I checked in, and when I’d dumped my luggage in my room I went back there and ate a meal of Wiener Schnitzel, fried potatoes and cucumber salad. When the waitress asked me if I’d like to see the wine list, I answered “No” rather more emphatically than was perhaps strictly necessary. It was one of the things I was learning: how to refuse alcohol without making a big deal of it.

  “Could I have a sparkling mineral water with lime, please,” I said, glancing up at her. She was called Kristina and her hair was pulled back in a glossy blonde pony tail. “Lime, not lemon.”

  My plan for the evening was to take a walk and then to get an early night. The next day, I was to take the train to Leipzig, where I had an appointment at the Federal Authority for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic.

  I scrunched up my napkin, pulled on my coat and headed out into the night. I walked briskly past Friedrichstraße in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate, breathing in the smell of roasting chestnuts and the freezing night air. I stuffed my hands in my coat pockets, cursing myself for forgetting to bring gloves, and turned up my collar against the biting cold.

  At the Brandenburg Gate, I stopped for a moment to watch people ambling across what had once been the most heavily fortified border in the world. Fourteen years previously, when I was in West Berlin trying to find a way to get back to the East, I’d huddled on to a viewing platform on the western side with a bunch of tourists. So grey, they’d said as we gazed into East Berlin. Look at the tiny little cars! But my eyes were fixed on the slender Television Tower which glinted to me in the sunlight like a beacon.

  Later, I took the U-Bahn to Wedding, passing through the ghost stations patrolled by armed guards. There were fewer tourists at the viewing platform there, and I stood for a long time staring at the sign that read ‘FIN DU SECTEUR FRANCAIS’. Beyond the watchtower, where guards could be seen moving about, were the blocked-up apartment buildings on Bernauer Street. Marek’s apartment on Pflaster Street was just a few streets away.

  Now the only reminder of that time was a double line of cobblestones threaded through the tarmac interrupted at intervals by a brass plaque that read ‘Berliner Mauer, 1961-1989’. I turned and headed back through the bare lime trees on Unter den Linden towards the river, where I crossed the bridge and headed down Karl Liebknecht Street. It was like a visiting an old friend who’s been very ill: familiar but different. The brown windows of the Palace of the Republic were strewn with graffiti. The cathedral had been tarted up. Shiny new trams trundled along the tracks, occasionally coupled to renovated cars from the old days.

  Suddenly, I felt sickened. My old friend wasn’t going to make it. The city had lost its heart and soul. Abruptly, I turned into a side street and marched blindly away from the iconic buildings of the city centre. I’m not sure how far I walked. Several miles at least. Soon I was away from the centre in the streets of Prenzlauer Berg, where freshly renovated apartment buildings painted in bright colours stood side-by-side with dilapidated edifices like the one Magda used to take me to on Shakespeare Street in Leipzig. As I rounded a corner, I caught sight of a café bar that looked familiar. On impulse, I went in.

  “A sparkling mineral water,” I said to the waiter. “With lime, not lemon.”

  I picked up the menu. Café North. I peered into the interior and recogni
sed enough to know it was it was the same place where I’d seen Magda and Marek kissing on the dance floor to the strains of Mack the Knife. I sighed. I’d been such a young fool.

  As I waited for my mineral water, I examined the other drinks on the menu: the ones I couldn’t have. Red wine. White wine. Prosecco. Sekt. Lager. Dark beer. Malt beer. Vodka. Gin. Whisky. What wouldn’t I have given to have one? Just one glass of wine. Or one beer. Something to take the edge off. But it was impossible. I knew that. I’d finally learnt my lesson.

  The previous week, I’d celebrated six months of sobriety. Phil shook my hand as I walked through the door of the consulting room at the South Islington Alcohol Advisory Service and gave me a card. It was from Sally. I’m so proud of you! it read.

  I sat down in the orange plastic bucket chair and stared at the card. “Tell her, tell Sally, I’m sorry,” I said, a sob rising in my throat. “Tell her – ” I couldn’t go on.

  Phil squeezed my shoulder and gave me a hankie. “It’s all right. She knows … ”

  I downed my sparkling mineral water, threw some money on the table and got up to go. Time I was safely back in my room at the hotel on Unter den Linden.

  *

  I woke with a start and sat bolt upright, sweating. My mouth was dry and my head hurt. I’d been drinking. I’d had a beer at Café North. Just a small one for old time’s sake. Ein kleines Bier, bitte. So easy to say. And to drink. Golden liquid in a stem glass glistening with bubbles. Ice cold beer sizzling on my tongue and shimmering down my throat. It was only a beer. Christ’s sake. What was that? Four, five per cent? Big deal. But then I wanted a whisky. Waiter! A whisky, please! Bring me a fucking whisky! A big continental measure in a thick-bottomed whisky tumbler. I weighed it in my hand, swirling the liquid round, watching the oily traces slide down the glass, then I knocked it back. It stung like fuck and it was beautiful.

  I collapsed back on the pillows and closed my eyes. Dreaming that you’ve had a drink is a normal part of the recovery process, but I hadn’t had a dream like that in weeks. I rolled over. The alarm read: 04.39. I jumped out of bed and went over to the minibar. The door clinked as I opened it, and cold light streamed on to my feet. I knelt down and looked at all the little coloured bottles in the door: blue, green, red, amber. I picked up a miniature of Johnny Walker Red Label. The frock-coated man strode jauntily across the label, manufactured in Kilmarnock, about thirty miles from Calderhill. Keep walking. That was the Johnny Walker slogan. Keep walking away. That was mine. I took a bottle of sparkling mineral water from the bottom shelf, kicked the door shut and got back into bed.